Vibe coding has hit Silicon Valley job postings. It will reach Russia in a year or two—and it’s time to prepare now

Visa, Reddit, DoorDash, and dozens of other tech companies have begun requiring engineers to be proficient in AI-assisted coding. Here is what this means for business and why Russian entrepreneurs should take note.

What happened

Business Insider has identified a widespread trend: major U.S. tech companies have started including "vibe coding"—the practice of writing code in tandem with AI tools like Cursor, Bolt, and Claude Code—as a job requirement.

Visa has posted three job openings where familiarity with these tools is listed as "required." Reddit is hiring an engineer to develop integrations for AI code generators. Domu Technology, a startup from the Y Combinator accelerator, has made vibe coding experience a "mandatory requirement," stating that at least half of a candidate's code should already be written with the help of AI.

The term itself was coined in early 2025 by Andrej Karpathy, one of the founders of OpenAI. In just a year and a half, the practice has gone from a social media post to a standard job description requirement.

Why companies need this

One reason is speed. In an interview with Business Insider, Intuit CTO Alex Balash stated: "A good engineer using these tools works 40% faster."

For businesses, this means the same team can ship 1.5x more features, test hypotheses faster, and slash their time-to-market. In an environment where product competition is won by speed, this stops being a "nice-to-have" and becomes a structural advantage.

AI does not replace experienced engineers. It handles the grunt work—boilerplate code, landing pages, prototypes, and standard service integrations. Complex system architecture and production-ready code still require a human with expertise. It is an augmentation tool, not a replacement.

Why this matters in Russia

In Russia, the adoption cycle trails Silicon Valley by about one to two years—this holds true for almost every tech trend. While individual Russian teams are already using Cursor, Claude Code, and Windsurf, these skills aren't yet standard requirements in job postings. They will be within 12–18 months.

What this means for entrepreneurs currently running a product or planning development:

Development costs will drop. If a typical MVP currently costs 1.5–3 million rubles, in a year, similar projects will be built by teams 2–3 times smaller—making them significantly cheaper. This will fundamentally shift your leverage when negotiating with contractors and internal teams.

Competitors who adopt this first will gain a speed advantage. Not in terms of quality, but in iteration speed. In markets where testing hypotheses is more important than raw resources, this is the deciding factor.

When hiring developers, you need to look at how they use AI tools today. A candidate who knows how to work effectively with Cursor will be significantly more expensive a year from now than they are today. The current market has not yet priced in this salary premium.

What an entrepreneur should do

Three practical steps that don't require a technical background:

1. Ask your CTO or head of development which AI tools the team is using. If the answer is "none," that’s a red flag that warrants a conversation.

2. Try it yourself. Cursor costs about $20 a month. Even without coding knowledge, you can see how quickly a simple landing page or prototype comes together—and realize the scale of the change.

3. When hiring developers, include a question about their AI tool usage in the interview. This isn't a pass/fail filter, but a marker of the candidate’s adaptability.

"Vibe coding" is neither magic nor a threat. It is a new productivity standard that will soon become a basic requirement. Those who master it early will gain an 18-month head start—and in the product business, 18 months determines almost everything.